Social Media Week is a leading news platform and worldwide conference that curates and shares the best ideas and insights into social media and technology's impact on business, society, and culture.

Infographics have become one of the leading forms of visual content on the web, and many marketers and content strategists are taking full advantage of their popularity. Today, if your company isn’t making use of visual content elements like infographics, you are already falling behind in the “Inbound Marketing Movement”. The primary reason that you should create infographics for your blog is that they are an excellent means of generating more traffic to your site. The four reasons below will hopefully help to convince you of the many marketing potentials that infographics can have on bringing more awareness to your business and website.

Infographics can be shared across multiple platforms

First of all, infographics can be shared across a wide range of online platforms that a blog article might not necessarily be a proper fit for. For instance, Pinterest is geared fundamentally towards image curation and is one of the largest social media platforms on the web. In fact, there are 72.8 Million monthly active users on the site, many of which might be interested in your business but who are missing out because you are not feeding them the right kind of content. Another great visual social media platform is Instagram. Instagram has even more active monthly users than Pinterest- over 300 million to be exact! And keep in mind that these numbers are growing everyday. Instagram is a particularly important platforms to advertise on if your product is geared towards youth, since the majority of teenagers use it as their main means of social sharing. Facebook and Twitter posts that include visual content are shared up to 35% more frequently than posts without any image URL.

Infographics make text-heavy articles more bearable and easier to understand

How many times have you come across an article that is so lengthy and so text-heavy that you struggle to get through it? It happens more often than you think, and the reason for that is because of the lack of visual interruptions that exist within the post. Human beings are not able to focus for very long periods of time on a given subject. In a study conducted by Microsoft, it was reported that humans have an average attention span of only 8 seconds in comparison to goldfish that have an average attention span of 12 seconds. In general, a 1,200 word article takes far more time to interpret than an image does. By including an infographic in your article, even if someone doesn’t feel like scanning through your text-based content, you can at least ensure that they take in a portion of your visual content. Adding visual interruptions is an excellent way to further emphasize a specific point you are trying to make, but also to give your readers’ eyes a bit of a break.

They can help increase SEO

If you’re hoping to boost your website’s keyword ranking on Google, infographics can certainly offer a helping hand. When you create an infographic you can add alt text, a title and a description that uses the keywords your business generally targets. If your infographic gets shared on other websites, blogs and social media platforms, your chances of consistently seeing a boost in SEO is increased. Furthermore, if you send your infographic to other influencers who might make use of it and find it interesting, you increase your chances of gaining useful backlinks. If you’re struggling to create an infographic, Venngage did a study on what aspects make for the perfect Pinterest infographic, and analyzed what elements make an infographic more shareable. By following these expert guidelines, you can make sure that the content you are creating is what people find more interesting. Creating “Guestographics”, as recommended by Brian Dean from Backlinko, is also another great tactic. He suggests that you should create an infographic and post it on your site. Then he says that you should find other people who are talking about the topic you’ve outlined in your infographic and send them what you created. Sometimes, people will post it on their own web and provide you with a backlink to credit you. This is a great way of using the same piece of content as a means to get more and more mentions.

Links and Interactive elements can generate more traffic to your site

Finally, by adding links or interactive elements to an infographic, you can ensure that your infographic not only functions as a form of visual content, but also that is has conversion properties. That way, if you decide to embed an infographic on a webpage, you can use links to direct your readers to a specific source. For instance, you can add a call to action directly into an infographic, or add polls and forms in order to acquire useful data or grow an email subscriber list. Generally the emails and engagement you gain from this method are a lot more worthwhile, since you already know that these are individuals who will likely engage with your brand again in the future.

Infographics are an excellent way to generate traffic to your site, and to engage your readers more actively. Many companies will either hire a designer to help with visual content creation, or will use an online infographic maker to help them create infographics with ease. You can reference the infographic below, or embed it onto your own site as well.

Nadya Khoja

Digital Marketing, Venngage

Nadya Khoja is a Visual Content and Digital Marketing Specialist. She is part of the team at Venngage, an online infographic maker. Nadya has a B.A. with Specialized Honours in Devised Theatre and a Master's Degree in Digital Media with a focus on Audience Engagement and Immersive Experiences. When she has time, Nadya directs, produces and sound designs for experimental and interactive performances.

Newsletter Subscription

Get the latest insights, trends and best practices from today's leading industry voices.

Weekly Digest of News & Insights

SMW New York announcements

SMW Los Angeles announcements

SMW London announcements

Watch SMW Live

SMW Insider is a premium video platform that streams more than 180+ hours of talks, presentations, and interviews from leading industry experts.

Follow SMW

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, this includes personalizing content and advertising. By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies. I AcceptCookie Policy×